Once, in Beijing, a young girl in a red gown huddled in a doorway. She shielded her eyes from the flashes of light that arced across the blackened sky, her face soaked with tears, her heart pounding in her chest as the cacophony of noise rattled her skull.
In London, a family huddled together in a corner of their living room, across from the window that had blown itself out from the force of the first impact. They held between them the grandmothers crucifix, praying to their God as if he could save them.
A man stood atop the Eifel...
The farmer had just left, when the old woman paused scooping up the silver to ponder on his telling. "Blue eyes? Could have sworn they were brown."
She shrugged and lifted a loose board to join the fee with treasured cousins beneath the stair. A knock at the door left her breathless in the hurry to conceal her hoard.
"Who… who is it?" she wheezed. Rather than answer, the caller entered quickly and fell behind the door.
"It's about the eye drops." whispered the same maid as had visited before. "I'd put them in when the Mistress startled me. I...
He sat in the truck parked on the gravel drive, his arm hanging out the window, a cigarette dangling from his finger. The radio was on and Bon Jovi's Bed of Roses was blaring.
She watched him from the behind the closed screen door.
He lowered the visor so she wouldn't be able to see his reddened eyes. Def Lepard's Pour Some Sugar On Me came on next, and he tweaked the volume nob. He could tell she was still looking at him.
He finished his cigarette and flicked it out the window. He took a long drink from the...
In the morning, he'd wake up, stretch a bit and roll up his things into a small bundle and be on his merry way. There was a gym nearby with public access to the showers, where he'd wash his clothes and hang them to dry on a curtain bar somewhere as he brushed, shaved, showered and took care of his other personal grooming.
After that, he hopped on the back of a trolley and got his exercise for the day walking from the trolley stop on the edge of town to the orchard just a mile down the road. He'd...
I couldn't sleep, so I went out for a late-night walk around town. When I got to the bridge, I stopped to look out at the bright lights in the city.
Suddenly, a woman came up to me and gave me a hug. Not wanting to be rude, I hugged her back as we both looked off in the distance. I'm not sure why, but she began to move her hand lower down my back. I tried to hint that she was making this even more awkward than it already was by moving my arm up, almost to her neck,...
The day had dragged on. Lari looked around the street as she left work. She felt as if she had just ran a marathon with cement shoes on. You wouldn't think that being a marketing assistant would make someone so tired.
The street was full of the regular faces. People that she saw everyday, but never really looked at. Lari sighed as she waited for her bus. I need a vacation, she thought.
A young girl walked by, licking a dripping ice cream cone and holding a large red balloon. The girl didn't care that she had dripped chocolate down...
There is no point to seeing the forest, all you can ever see are the trees. And the trees are not the forest. You'll never comprehend the true size of the forest, for it is the world. You'll never understand that the forest is everything, and everything is the forest. You are the forest too.
So do as our people have always done. Wander, wander through the dappled sunlight. Wander, wander through the glades and covers and hidden places. Wander, wander without direction, because there is no direction. There is only forest.
Find the place that is your own. You'll...